EDWARD “TORPEDO” LEIALOHA

G.I. JOE: CLASSIFIED SERIES (HASBRO)

“Torpedo was a scuba instructor prior to enlistment. Attained black belts in three martial arts by age 19 (Wu-Shu, Kenpo, and Go-Ju-Ryu). Proficient with Filipino butterfly knife(Bali-Song). Training records after SEAL School: CLASSIFIED. Qualified Expert: Most NATO small arms, NATO and Warsaw Pact explosive devices.

Spends off-duty hours perfecting his fighting skills and marksmanship. Strict vegetarian. Regarded by his teammates as a highly competent professional, but has the personality of a cold fish.”

The first year of G.I. Joe’s move to the 3 3/4-inch scale was without any environment-specific figures.  When you’re trying to revive a brand, you probably don’t want to potentially limit sales on any of your figures by tying them too heavily into a set-up that not every kid is going to have.  Year two, however, injected a little bit of that, though, and gave us our first of a few different underwater specialists, in the form of Torpedo.  He’s not as flashy as the likes of Wet-Suit and Deep-Six, but he was still the first, and he’s also the first of them to join Classified, with a figure I’m looking at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Edward “Torpedo” Leialoha is figure 73 in Hasbro’s G.I. Joe: Classified Series.  At this point, they’ve moved away from actual assortments, instead just doing groupings of individual figures shipping in solid cases.  He’s a wide release figure, loosely grouped with Rock ‘n Roll and Copperhead.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 36 points of articulation.  Torpedo is sporting an all-new sculpt, handled by sculptor Paul Harding.  It’s already been set for some re-use on the upcoming Action Sailer anniversary figure, which makes sense, it being a pretty basic frogman set-up and all.  He’s clearly patterned on Torpedo’s v1 release, but he absorbs some of the design elements introduced in the 25th Anniversary release, most notably the lack of a permanently affixed mask.  It’s a very strong sculpt; there’s a lot of subtlety, and very balanced proportions, and I really like the unique quality of the facial sculpt.  The basic wetsuit has a lot of clean lines, and the extra add-on pieces break it up really nicely.  I definitely dig the slight dressing up that the harness gives the whole look.  In general, it keeps a lot of the vibe of the original look, while actually doing a little bit of updating.  It still remains a bit more real world than some of the early-line figures and their heavier sci-fi influence, but it’s not falling into the “vintage figure but bigger” territory of some of the more recent stuff.  Torpedo’s color scheme largely sticks to the grey and black of the vintage figure, but he does get a few other accents mixed in, as well as getting a fully painted face.  On my figure there’s a little slop on the edge of the skintone, but he is otherwise pretty solid.  Torpedo’s last name, Leialoha, and his birthplace as listed on his original file card, indicate that he’s of Polynesian decent, and his skin tone is a bit darker to support that, a noted change from how pale he tends to be.  It’s a pretty nice change, honestly, and adds some pleasant visual diversity to the Joes.  Torpedo is packed with his scuba gear, which includes a mask, tanks, and a pair of flippers.  They lean more into the real-world scuba look than previous designs, which lines up well with the rest of the design cues from this release.  Torpedo also includes a harpoon gun (like his vintage counterpart), a knife, and a rifle.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

My last G.I. Joe: Classified Series review ran in June (and was actually written about a month before that), which emphasizes for me just how removed I feel from the whole line.  Torpedo isn’t a character that I have a ton of attachment to, previously at least, so, while he looked cool, by the time he hit, I was kind of presuming I’d be passing him.  When he showed up in person, something about him called to me, I think largely because the classic frogman look has always been one of my favorite things about G.I. Joe, going back to the 12-inch figures, even.  I was hemming and hawing over buying the figure when Max decided to just make the decision for me, and buy this guy for me as a birthday present.  That sure was nice of him.  The nerve of some people, right?  I’ve been down on this line, but Torpedo does feel like a step in the right direction to me.  He doesn’t feel quite as slavishly devoted to his original figure, and he’s not as impossibly fiddly as Falcon was, so I do generally quite like him.